Hearken To Your Community
Breaking the taboos in journalism about who asks the questions.
Throughout the semester we were introduced to a number of useful and innovative platforms to help us engage with our communities and find what are the questions and conversations around them. One of these resources was Hearken, an audience driven platform that enables journalists and the public work together throughout the reporting process. Though for me having to deal with the actual system was a challenge at first, I soon realized how user-friendly it is and I greatly benefited from it.
My experience using Hearken with the audience was a good first experience. I shared the question: “what do you want to know about street art?” on different Facebook groups of my community: street art curating groups, non-profit organizations and on my personal account. Questions came mostly from my personal account, from people who wanted to know more about street art. Many came from people living outside of New York and were curious to know more about the street art scene; some others have more knowledge and were looking to know more about a topic they experience on the streets everyday.
What went particularly well?
What I considered a success was the kind of questions people asked and the different directions these suggested. Though some were very general, they gave me good leads. Finding a place where members of my community meet has been harder than I expected since street art is more of an individual endeavor. There have been many instances of frustration where I feel stuck in a particular story; however, the Hearken questions brought up themes and areas of interest that I didn’t think about before. I felt like I was trying to jump over a tall fence and had someone tell me there is a door right ahead; while trying to figure out how to jump I couldn’t see that there might be another way in if I keep walking. Promoting engagement within our targeted and our potential audiences, gives us the opportunity to have other perspectives and new ideas of how to jump the fence, instead of locking on one specific subject.
What would I do differently next time?
I try to stay positive and would like to incorporate Hearken to my research process in the future. However, there are a couple of things I would change and improve when doing so to achieve greater reach. First of all, I only had one main question posted on the platform which was general enough for the audience to expand their scope when asking their questions; but it excluded the people who already know about street art and have other concerns, or the artists themselves. I would change the questions according to my different audiences: the artists’ concerns, readers who want to know more about my community and organizations involved and helping street art.
Engaging with a community that is not my own is very challenging: there is a lot about them I don’t know and therefore I need to be careful when trying to “enter” my communities. One method I’ve seen succeed within my classmates is to find a person from their community that connects them to the others, a mediator. Though in theory this might be easier, in practice takes time and good luck; and I haven’t had neither with the organizations and people I’ve contacted. As I get to know more people and dive deeper into my community’s concerns, I am trying to locate a mediator that would help facilitate the development of a relationship with my community.
How did having a tool help you in the process?
Having Hearken as a tool helped me to be organized, having all the questions asked by my audience gathered in one place only. Hearken is a user-friendly platform for us and for the audience that facilitates participation which is key when promoting online interaction. Another benefit of such platform is the opportunity to appeal to different audiences in one virtual place, instead of having to be physically present sacrificing efficiency, quickness and reach. In addition, many people find online participation more trustful and less threatening than face-to-face and this platform gave them the freedom to expand or not and ask whatever they want.
How do you think stories driven by your communities questions are different from those you might have come up with if you were working in a newsroom and using a more traditional process of coming up with story ideas?
If we were working on newsrooms using more traditional approaches to journalism we wouldn’t have the opportunity to be working with different social platforms like the ones we have been introduced to. The idea behind Hearken is that one of social journalism, to be audience-driven, allowing journalists and readers to interact and be partners in the reporting process. What Hearken provides is the opportunity to use technology to make the process faster, easier and more organized. Benefiting from the advantages of a digital-driven era to do social journalism.
